


This is that thing they talk of, then, when they talk of love

by Pouxin



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst obviously, Episode: s08e04 The Last of the Starks, F/M, Not A Fix-It, POV Brienne of Tarth, Ugh, heterosexual men are literally the worst which is why I normally don't write them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:01:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23892751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pouxin/pseuds/Pouxin
Summary: The whole time they are fucking it is difficult not to imagine him as he is when they spar with each other, rolling his eyes at some misstep on her part, some false move.  As she moves her hand on him she can almost hear his voice, the rich tone of his mockery: “Clumsily done. Do not tell anyone I gave you that sword”.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 25
Kudos: 71





	This is that thing they talk of, then, when they talk of love

**Author's Note:**

> This has been knocking around on my phone since the day after the episode aired, so I thought I might as well post it. 
> 
> Apologies to Raymond Carver for the title.

The whole time they are fucking it is difficult not to imagine him as he is when they spar with each other, rolling his eyes at some misstep on her part, some false move. As she moves her hand on him she can almost hear his voice, the rich tone of his mockery: “ _Clumsily done. Do not tell anyone I gave you that sword_ ”. 

She almost prefers the afterwards bit. Lying close to him in the half-light, the slight dreaminess in his eyes, a softness she hasn’t seen before. 

He runs the index finger of his remaining hand over the dent in her brow. 

“Well? You’re thinking something, I can tell. I would know it.”

“I… Was it good? You’re better at this than I, I fear I did it all wrong.”

Jaime smiles, warm and golden, like stepping out into the rose fields at Highgarden on a hazy sunlit afternoon. 

“No, you did it _all_ right.” He kisses her gently on the tip of her nose. “And for you? I trust it met with Ser’s satisfaction?”

“It was… different than I expected. Both more and less.”

He raises one eyebrow in mock affront. “Less, hmm?” He is still teasing her though. “In what way was it less?”

“I’ve read the poems, heard the songs. I half expected to be borne away to some other plain of heavenly existence. It was good, but the stars did not move, the world did not stop turning. The bed stayed hard beneath my back. The fleas still bit me. My bruises still hurt.”

Jaime laughs.

“Never let it be said, Brienne of Tarth, that you do not know how to make a man feel like a god”. 

“Are you quite sure _you_ did it right?” she asks, a note of teasing in her voice.

“Better than you’ll get elsewhere,” he replies gruffly, laughing again. He kisses her, but then he stops suddenly, rolling away. “Ah, what do I know? I’m just some poor fool who’s only ever lain with his sister.”

“Only with… _Only_ Cersei…? There’s never been…?”

“No.” He looks at her askance. “I know, I know, it’s ridiculous. Jaime Lannister, the playboy knight of Westeros, the Lady Slayer, he of the Golden Cock” – a mocking flourish of his stump here, indicating the golden hand discarded on the floor – “secretly a hopeless romantic. Unable to lie with a woman unless he loves her.”

He laughs at himself, but there is a sharp tang of bitterness in it this time.

Brienne’s mind moves slowly, as if trying to grasp something underneath dark running water.

“Unless you…”

She stops herself, because his face is terrible in that moment. Later, it’s why she will run out in the snow for him in nothing but her over cloak, raw and desperate. For that terrible brokenness in his impossibly beautiful face. 

“Jaime, I…”

He is suddenly on top of her, his lean weight a hot press, silencing her lips with his own. His fingers find her beneath the fur covers, moving with a practiced deftness – again she sees him with his sword in his hand, nimble as an acrobat, doing what he has trained all his life for. Never unprepared, never vulnerable, never open. She is wet where he touches her, wetter still now he has spent inside her, an unfamiliar slippery tightness growing and unfurling in her belly. She stiffens, moves against it. They are not so unalike, she and him. She does not want to be a novice in this, she does not want to be the only one who loses something, the only one who _feels_. If he will not give all of himself, she must hold herself back. 

And yet: _unable to lie with a woman unless he loves her_. That word. _Love_. 

“Brienne,” his voice is light again, teasing, patient. “This isn’t a battle. Stop fighting me.”

“I’m not…,” she starts, but he kisses her again, soft but insistent. 

“Brienne.”

He kisses her neck then, next her collarbone, the hollow spot in between her small breasts. Then in one fluid move he pushes himself lower down the bed, tosses the furs aside, settles between the marble pale of her splayed thighs. His eyes are alive, his smile positively wicked as he looks up at her. 

“Let’s see if I can make those fleas disappear, hmm?”

And his mouth is on her.

*

They have one more night together, and then she wakes suddenly in the dark, finding herself alone. But when her hand sweeps his side of the bed, the coverlet is still warm. Warm from all that golden sunshine skin. 

_Unless he loves her._

So she runs. Runs to him, and lets her heart pour out from where she has kept it so carefully caged all these years, inside the cracked bars of her warrior’s ribs. 

“Stay here. Stay with _me_.” Her hands pressed to the sides of his face. His beautiful face, the haunted hollows of it. “Please. _Stay_ ”. And her voice breaking on that last word, like she cannot contain the enormity of it. 

Jaime’s eyes on hers are endless. 

"You think I’m a good man? I pushed a boy out of a tower window, crippled him for life, for Cersei. I strangled my cousin with my own hands, just to get back to Cersei. I would’ve murdered every man, woman, and child in Riverrun, for Cersei. She’s hateful, and so am I."

It is quick, his leaving, like a dagger between the ribs. He mounts his horse, still with that fluid fighter’s grace, one swift knee in its side, and then, he is gone. 

She is left alone in the courtyard then, and it is as if she has been borne away to some other plain, one where the Night King is victorious and all the joy and hope and colour has been drained from the land. The snow is as ashes. The stars cringe and shiver. The world stops turning. It is just as the poems and songs have always said. Love.


End file.
